


Half-Finished Pictures

by Linsky



Series: Pictures [1]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Connor is kind of oblivious, Friends to Lovers, Hallsy and Ebs are very interesting roommates, M/M, Slow Build, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Trope Subversion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-23
Updated: 2016-09-23
Packaged: 2018-08-16 18:40:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8113192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linsky/pseuds/Linsky
Summary: Connor knew that some people started dating before they got their soul marks at twenty-four. He just never expected those people to be anyone he knew.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bloodbright](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodbright/gifts).



> …who didn’t ask for Connor/Dylan and probably didn’t want it. Also this was supposed to be a 2015 Christmas present. I did so good. :D
> 
> AU in that Ebs never moved out and apparently eighteen is not the drinking age in Alberta. Yup.
> 
> Thanks to Kristie for fixing things!!

Connor's only been in Edmonton for half an hour before he's convinced that Jordan Eberle hates him.

"He does not hate you," Dylan says when Connor tells him this over the phone.

"You didn't see his face," Connor whispers. He's hiding in the back of his closet to talk, because he hasn't been here long enough to know how thin the walls are.

"Okay, but why would he?" Dylan asks.

"Maybe he's..." Connor starts to say, and then stops. He doesn't like to imply that people might be jealous of him. He wouldn’t have watched his words with Dylan before, but he’s not totally sure where they stand after everything.

“Maybe he really wanted Jack Eichel to be the savior of the Oilers?” He can hear the smirk in Dylan’s voice.

“Shut up.” Connor’s stomach flutters at the phrase, and he shifts against the game-day suit that’s the only thing he’s hung up in his closet so far. “I’m not the…whatever.”

“I know,” Dylan says. “Why do you think the guy wanted Eichel?”

“Asshole,” Connor says, but he’s grinning a little, helplessly. “Anyway, shut up, I’m trying to talk to you about a real problem here. I really think Eberle—”

The closet door pops open before he can finish his sentence. It’s Taylor Hall. He’s wearing ratty sweats, and his hair is sticking up. "Dude!" he says. "What are you doing in the closet? Come out here, Ebs is making dinner."

"Right," Connor says, fumbling with the phone. "Um, be right out."

He gets a text from Dylan as he follows Hallsy out of the room. All it says is, _Is it KD?_

***

It is KD.

And, okay, Connor might have to revise his earlier hypothesis, because it doesn't seem like Ebs hates him. It seems more like he hates...everything.

He frowns through his bowl of KD with chicken and peas, even though he made it, so in theory he should like it. And it’s not like Connor’s spent a lot of time with the dude or anything, but he seemed pretty friendly during BioSteel camp, and Connor had him pegged as the kind of chill guy who’d make a good teammate. And, you know, roommate. But now he’s not even looking at Hallsy, who he was practically stapled to earlier that summer, and he definitely doesn’t take it well when Connor tries to make small talk.

Maybe Connor should have picked a different topic than Ebs’ soul mark. “It’s a tree,” Hallsy says when Ebs mumbles something into his KD instead of answering. Hallsy also seems to be acting kind of weird, but Connor is trying not to dwell on that, because the thought of both of his roommates resenting his presence within the first twenty-four hours is too much to deal with. “I mean, like, half of one, obviously. He’s just jealous ’cause he knows mine is going to turn out so much more awesome.”

“Shut up, you non, I am not,” Ebs says.

Hallsy rolls his eyes, and Connor thinks he’s had enough of trying to engage Ebs tonight. “You’re twenty-four in November, right?” he says to Hallsy instead.

“Yup.” Hallsy holds out his blank wrist. “November fourteenth, baby. Gonna have such a sweet picture.”

“Sure, should be great,” Connor says.

Ebs stands up abruptly. “I’m gonna finish this in my room,” he says, grabbing his bowl and walking out.

“What was that?” Connor says to Hallsy when he’s gone.

Hallsy shrugs. “Sometimes Ebs is dumb,” he says, but he looks over his shoulder at the door. “I’m, um, I’m gonna go talk to him. You hang tight, okay?”

And then Connor’s alone at the table, just him and a bowl of KD. _What did I get myself into,_ he texts to Dylan.

_Hahahahaha,_ is all Dylan sends back. Connor needs a new best friend.

***

Ebs is way friendlier to him when they get up the next morning to go to training camp. “Sorry for, uh, maybe being kind of a dick last night,” he says when Connor runs into him in the kitchen.

“No big,” Connor says, because he’s not about to deny it. Ebs was kind of a dick.

“Breakfast?” Ebs asks, and Connor knows a peace offering when he hears one. He also knows not to turn down free eggs.

Hallsy slouches out of his room about two seconds before the eggs are served. “Not ready to be awake,” he mumbles, and Ebs puts a mug of coffee in front of him as Hallsy makes a grab for the eggs.

“Hey, those are for the kid,” Ebs says.

“It’s okay. I think Hallsy’s still enough of a kid to qualify,” Connor says.

Ebs laughs. The pinched look is gone from his face, and he’s smiling at Hallsy, whose hair is sticking up in funny places and whose nose is invisible beneath the rim of the mug of coffee. Connor feels something in his stomach unknot itself.

***

Training camp is brutal.

Connor knew it would be. He’s playing with guys who are used to this pace, guys who have played multiple seasons in the NHL and who’ve had more than his eighteen years to develop their muscles. And they’re all looking to him to be the best one on the ice.

He’s pretty sure he’s not the best one on the ice, not yet. He’s doing okay, but okay isn’t going to cut it this year.

He does get a really sweet goal in the scrimmage at the end of the day, and he gets an assist off of Yak’s.

“Fuck yeah, you beauty!” Hallsy shouts in his ear in the locker room later. “Knew it!”

“Is good club member,” Yak says, and Hallsy starts giggling.

“Club?” Connor asks. He’s sitting on a bench, trying not to betray how much he feels like limp pasta.

“First picks.” Hallsy beams at him. “What do you think, Nail? Treasurer?”

“Ryan is president,” Yak tells Connor. “I want, but they say no.”

“You wanted to make us meet at Timmy’s,” Hallsy says.

“Is best place in Canada,” Yak says while Hallsy shoves him with a hand to his face.

“There’s not really a club, is there?” Connor asks, and the two of them start laughing harder.

***

Connor can barely move his arms and legs by the time he gets home that first day. He always skates hard—what’s the point, otherwise?—but today it’s all he can do is hobble out of the car and into his bedroom and collapse on his bed, where he spends ten minutes trying to convince himself that getting out of his jeans is worth the price of having to stand up again.

He tries to get up and falls right back down. Well, jeans aren’t really that uncomfortable, when you get right down to it.

Ebs pokes his head through the door. “Hey, kid,” he says. “We’re going out.”

Connor makes a noise that he thinks he intended to be words. He’s not sure which ones, though.

Hallsy’s head appears next to Ebs. “Non-optional. Captain’s orders.”

“I thought we didn’t have a captain,” Connor says.

Hallsy waves a hand. “Don’t question the providence of the captain’s orders.”

Ebs makes a face. “Do you mean ‘provenance’?”

“Don’t question the providence of the providence!” Hallsy says, and Ebs elbows him in the stomach and Hallsy tries to give him a noogie and they have a brief wrestling match that somehow turns into the two of them dragging Connor out of bed and toward the door.

Well, at least he never got around to taking his jeans off.

***

They go to a bar that Hallsy dubs “the bomb.” Ebs nods in agreement, and Connor should really start questioning the underpinnings of his existence, one of these days.

Basically everyone at camp is there. They take over three long tables at the back of the bar and generally are intimidating enough that people give them a wide berth.

“Rookie buys the first round!” Teddy Purcell shouts as soon as they show up, grabbing Connor around the shoulders.

“Rookie can’t drink,” Connor says.

Purce looks stricken, like he actually forgot about that. “Rookie can help carry, then,” he says, and he drags Connor towards the bar.

Connor doesn’t want to help carry. He never wants to move his limbs again after the way they got skated today. But he understands team bonding, and he understands being a rookie. He goes to the bar.

He doesn’t really want to drink, either, because he’ll probably fall asleep if he does, but Hallsy makes a big thing out of slipping him a beer, and he and Ebs and Cam Talbot stand guard on three sides of him while Ryan Nugent-Hopkins laughs at them from across of the table.

“You’re just going to make it more obvious,” Nuge says, and yeah, that’s a waitress heading over with a curious look on her face.

“Oh shit,” Hallsy says, and turns and chugs the entire rest of Connor’s beer.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Ebs points out. “It’s not like _you’re_ not allowed to be holding a beer.”

“Oh, right,” Hallsy says, but he looks proud of himself anyway. Ebs head-butts him in the shoulder.

There are a few other guys who aren’t drinking: other new draftees and potential call-ups from the AHL. Connor doesn’t really know how to talk to them, though: they’re probably not sticking around for the season, and they know it, and they know he knows it, and it makes him feel guilty. Plus, sometimes they get a look on their faces that’s a little too much like the ones he sees on fans. He sticks to the older guys.

That means hanging around a lot of increasingly drunk people, though. “I want you to keep these,” Hallsy says halfway through the night, pressing his car keys into Connor’s hand. He has this very earnest look, like maybe he’s handing over his firstborn child (and isn’t that a thing that should not exist yet).

“Sure, buddy,” Connor says, and Hallsy grins and slouches off to drape himself over Ebs’ back.

There are girls around, too. Connor’s not dumb enough to think he’ll have any luck if he goes up to them, but one of them stares at him when he goes up to the bar with Nuge to carry another round. She’s pretty, kind of strikingly so, but she’s not looking at his face; she’s looking around his waistline. Connor feels weird about that until he realizes she’s trying to get a glimpse of his wrist.

That’s—huh. Wow. Granted, Connor hasn’t spent that much time in bars up till now, but he’s never had anyone mistake him for twenty-four before. He still gets carded at R-rated movies sometimes.

He sidles up behind Ryan and casually hikes up his sleeve to scratch at the blank skin of his left wrist. When he looks back at the girl, she’s looking away.

Ryan nudges him with a tray of beers. “Trying to attract cougars?” he asks with a nod at Connor’s wrist.

“Yeah, the older the better,” he jokes. He’s not trying to attract anyone. Maybe he’ll try to hook up once the season’s started; right now he can’t imagine having the energy.

“Short sleeves next time,” Ryan says, like maybe Connor was being serious. “Just look at Nail.” He gestures to the other end of the bar, where Nail is, in fact, in a short-sleeved shirt. He’s talking to a woman who has to be at least fifteen years older than him. Connor can see half an underwater scene on her wrist.

“Is that smart?” Connor asks.

“Just a hookup, right?”

Connor bites his lip. “No, but, I mean, wouldn’t she already—like, wouldn’t she have found…”

Ryan shrugs. “Lots of people don’t find their soulmates right away,” he says, like it’s no big deal. “Or don’t look for them.”

Connor can’t imagine that. Can’t imagine knowing he could find his soulmate and not wanting to, or having a soulmate who didn’t want to find him. That would just be—

Hallsy stumbles over before he can think too hard about it, a semi-conscious Ebs leaning against his shoulder. “I think Ebby’s drunk,” he slurs.

“I think _you’re_ drunk,” Connor says.

Ebs laughs and bops Hallsy on the nose. “’S what I said,” he says, and Hallsy tries to whack his hand away and ends up hitting himself on the ear.

Ryan smirks at Connor. “All yours, man.”

Come to think of it, Connor is not in a position to question anyone else’s life choices.

***

Connor plays chauffeur to Hallsy and Ebs while they whisper together in the backseat the whole way home. Connor can’t hear what they’re saying, but he doubts he’s missing out on much.

He’s expecting them to be hungover the next morning, but they’re at breakfast as usual, surprisingly clear-eyed. “Come on,” Hallsy says, shoving a bowl of cereal at Connor, “if we leave now, we can get on the ice before warm-ups start.”

_I think Hallsy and Ebs have superpowers,_ Connor texts to Dylan in the car on the way to Leduc.

_Stockholm Syndrome,_ Dylan texts back, and Connor’s busy looking that up, trying to come up with something really scathing to send back, when he gets to his stall in the locker room and sees the nativity scene, complete with baby Jesus holding a hockey stick.

Connor stops in his tracks. Hallsy and Ebs drop to the floor in laughter. At least half the other guys crack up, too, while the other half looks around to see what’s going on. Nikitin is practically sobbing against a locker, and Yak is behind him, slapping him on the back. “McJesus!” he shouts in Connor’s ear, and even in his Russian accent, it’s not mistakable for anything else.

Connor’s stomach is doing something unpleasant and his face is burning, but he makes himself grin. “Be nice or I won’t give you my blessing,” he says, and everyone roars even louder.

***

“They did what?” Dylan says that night over Skype. Dylan looks kind of pale and has a bruise on his jaw, but his face is still the best thing Connor’s seen all day. Even if right now he’s grinning like he just won the Cup.

“Thank for the sympathy,” Connor says. “If this ends up on a hockey blog somewhere…”

“I already tweeted it to every sports reporter in Alberta,” Dylan says.

Connor sputters. “You don’t tweet _to_ people. I mean, not to—groups—stop laughing, idiot, you know what I mean.”

“Hey, chill out,” Dylan says. “You should be happy about this.”

Connor narrows his eyes. “Why?”

“Because it means they don’t think you’re actually McJesus.”

“Um, pretty sure a manger in my locker means they _do_ think I’m McJesus.”

Dylan waves a hand. “Nah. If they thought you were McJesus, they’d just be quiet about it. Same if they thought you weren’t actually any good. This means they think you are good, but they’re not taking you too seriously.”

Connor’s pretty sure that doesn’t make sense, but it makes him feel a little better anyway. “See, there’s the Stromer logic I missed,” he says, and regrets it immediately for the way it makes Dylan’s face go tight.

“I didn’t mean—um—sorry,” Connor says. He can feel his cheeks heat. “Anyway, I’m super tired. Is your camp as bad as mine?”

Dylan’s face relaxes a little, probably because they’re no longer talking about the things they don’t talk about. “Probably,” he says. “I think I actually fell asleep while taking my shoes off tonight.”

“I left mine on,” Connor says. “Laces are too complicated.”

“We got bag-skated twice today. _Twice._ I didn’t even know that was humanly possible.”

“Man,” Connor says, “if this is just training camp, what’s it going to be like once the season starts?”

Dylan’s face flickers a little, something Connor can’t quite read, before it settles into a smile. “Yeah. You keep complaining when the Coyotes kick your asses,” he says, and Connor flips him off, and it feels normal again.

***

Training camp means skating harder than he has in his entire life. It means trying to be perfect, to land every shot and make every pass, because every time he messes something up, he feels everybody’s eyes on him. And as he gets more tired near the end of the week, he can feel his ability to be perfect start to erode.

“Can’t always be perfect,” Ferrence tells him at the end of the day with a clap on the shoulder, and that’s a nice thing to say, but it’s one voice saying it against dozens of reporters who keep asking him about Jack Eichel.

“He’s a great player,” Connor says to a group of them in the locker room that day, as if that’s in any way relevant to his own performance or to anything in his life, really, now that the draft’s over. But he has a feeling they’re going to make it stay relevant.

“What do you think of the Sabres’ chances this year?”

Connor blinks at the reporter, because maybe he misheard, but no, they’re actually asking about the Sabres. “Well, they’re still rebuilding, but it’s a solid group of guys.” He puts on a grin. “Not going all the way if we can help it, though,” he adds, and the reporters laugh and finally, thank God, drop that line of questioning.

He drove to the rink alone that morning—Hallsy and Ebs were having some argument about the laundry he didn’t want to get involved in—and he’s so tired he thinks he might actually fall asleep if he doesn’t have anyone to talk to on the way home, so he calls Dylan.

“I think we need to hire body doubles for the season,” he says when Dylan picks up. “We can play hockey, and they can handle the stupid interviews.”

“Good plan,” Dylan says. “You’ll have to let me know how it goes.”

There’s something off about his voice; it’s hard to tell over the shitty car speakers, but Connor’s pretty sure. “Everything okay?”

“I’m heading back,” Dylan says.

“Yeah, me too, such a long fucking day—” Connor starts to say, but Dylan cuts him off.

“No, I’m—I’m being sent down,” he says. “I’ll be with the Otters this year.”

It’s a good thing Connor’s still in the parking lot, because he loses track of what’s in front of him for a moment. “Wait, are you kidding?”

“It’s a normal thing for the first year,” Dylan says. The words sound tired, like maybe he’s been repeating them to himself. “Most people don’t make the show right out of the draft.”

“Yeah, but—” Connor flails for words. “That’s such _bullshit.”_

“No, it’s not.” Dylan’s voice is tinny through the speakers, and Connor hates it, hates that he can’t see what his face is doing. “They’re right. I need more development before I’ll be ready to play at this level.”

“But.” Connor squeezes the steering wheel. He’s glad there’s no one else in the car right now, because this is ridiculous. “Dyls. You’re _so good._ ”

Dylan laughs a little. “Thanks, Davo.”

“No, but really,” Connor says. “OHL scoring leader. They’d have to be blind not to see what you can do.”

“Yeah, well.” He can practically see how Dylan’s shoulders would be tensing up right now. “You’re staying up, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” Connor says. They talked to him about getting housing before camp even started. It hadn’t occurred to him to wonder about it, really, and now he feels stupid.

He thinks about it, about how he’d feel about getting sent down this year. It feels strange, like glimpsing an alternate life. They could have been playing for the Otters for another year, the pair of them, Connor and Dylan—

But no. Connor’s in the NHL now.

“Sucks,” he says to Dylan.

“What, having to play for the Oilers?” Dylan says.

“No, asshole, that’s the best,” Connor says. Then, forcing cheer into his voice: “You better hope you get some good development down in Erie, because we’re going to kick your ass once you get to Arizona.”

Dylan snorts. “Sure you are, loser.”

“Kick it so hard.”

“Thanks, Davo,” Dylan says, a little quieter.

“Anytime,” Connor says.

***

They don’t tap him to play in the first preseason game, which is annoying. A preseason game might not count for anything, but at least it’s not staying home.

On the other hand, it means he gets to sleep.

Hallsy isn’t playing either, and Connor wakes up around dinnertime to him scratching at his door. Like, actually scratching. “Davey Davey Davey,” Hallsy calls, and Connor groans.

“Come in,” he says. “You’re not a dog.”

Hallsy saunters in. “That’s not what your mom said last night.”

“You know you just insulted yourself, right?”

Hallsy grins and faceplants on the bed next to Connor. “I’m bored,” he says. “It’s boring without Ebby here.”

“Gee, thanks,” Connor says.

Hallsy pokes him. “Would be less boring if you played NHL with me until the game starts.”

“Would also be less boring if you took a nap,” Connor says.

“Already did.” He kicks Connor in the shin a little. “Come oooon. You’ve been asleep for like twenty hours.”

It’s only been two, but Connor gets up anyway and follows Hallsy into the living room, where he proceeds to lose at everything.

“I’m starting to think you guys play this way too much,” Connor says, dropping the controller after the third time Hallsy kicks his ass at NHL 16.

“You’re living with champions,” Hallsy says.

***

Connor plays his first preseason game the next night, and it goes okay, even if he thinks he could do better. He tries not to sound too annoyed about it when he’s talking to the press afterward. He knows this dance: be humble but not too down on yourself, talk about how you can improve without making anyone feel like they just watched a bad game.

The guys make him come out and drink with them afterward. Which doesn’t actually translate to Connor drinking, because of the thing where he’s not legal yet, but at least no one gets trashed this time, including Hallsy and Ebs.

Dylan texts him while they’re at the bar: _Nice shot._

Connor hesitates for a second before typing back. They’ve been weird about other things before, but never this, never hockey, and it’s—

He finally just sends back, _Thanks._

***

They start winning their preseason games. Connor’s a little surprised by this—he knows the Oilers’ record—but it’s nothing to what he sees on his teammates’ faces. They’re practically giddy.

“It’s just the preseason,” Nuge says. “Doesn’t count.”

“Fuck off,” Ebs says, from where he’s giving Hallsy a piggyback ride. His hair is sticking up where Hallsy’s using it as reins. “Learn to enjoy it.”

Connor’s enjoying it. This is how it’s supposed to be: the team getting better. He doesn’t know how much of it is down to him—he’s still getting used to playing in the NHL, and he doesn’t think he’s making as much of a difference as he should be—but at least things are going in the right direction.

Maybe the fourth superstar’s the charm.

He’s not playing in all the games, so the schedule is a little less brutal. That doesn’t mean he’s thrilled when, on their first full day off after five straight wins, Hallsy wakes him up by jumping on his bed.

To be fair, it is noon. But no one should be woken up by Hallsy jumping on their bed, ever. “Dude, wake up!” Hallsy says, putting his knee down on Connor’s foot and possibly crippling him for life. “It’s time for the thing at Ferry’s.”

“Um, what?” Connor says, flexing his foot to check for damage.

“You know,” Hally says. “The barbecue thing. He was talking about it yesterday.”

Ebs drags into the room, still in pajamas and eyes looking sleepier than ever. “I think Davo was talking to the press for that part.”

“Oh, right,” Hallsy says, and yeah, Connor had to talk to this reporter for, like, forever, about his favorite pre-game meal and how he takes his coffee and all sorts of things he can’t imagine anyone actually wanting to know about him. It’s possible he missed a barbecue announcement.

Ebs drifts forward and leans against Hallsy, half asleep. Hallsy makes a noise of protest and shoves Ebs off, so that he ends up splayed across Connor’s mattress. It’s a little more teammate togetherness than Connor really needs.

“Okay,” he says, dragging the upper half of his body upright. “I’m…gonna shower, I guess.”

“We’ll keep your bed warm for you,” Hallsy mumbles, and then yelps when Ebs pushes him to the floor.

***

Ferry’s house is pretty great. Connor can see having a house like this, if he gets to settle down somewhere with a long-term contract. Ferry’s wife, Krista, answers the door. Connor can see the half-spiral on her wrist, the missing half of the one on Ferry’s.

“Come on in,” she says. “You can put your coats in the closet. And you two”—she points to Hallsy and Ebs—“don’t forget that you’re banned from the guest rooms.”

Hallsy starts giggling, and Ebs elbows him in the side. Connor doesn’t want to know.

The barbecue is a lot of fun, actually. It’s not a bar, which means Connor can drink here. He knows he shouldn’t drink too much—if nothing else, he doesn’t trust these guys not to draw all over his face if he passes out—but he’s so sick of being out and not being able to drink that being tipsy sounds amazing right now.

He gets in a conversation with Nikitin for a while, sidesteps Purce’s tirade about snowshoeing (or something? Connor’s not sure), and then drifts into the sunroom, where Krista’s talking about her and Ferry’s soul marks. “And then he actually got out a tape measure and made us measure the distance between the rings,” she says, and everyone cracks up.

“You didn’t,” Cam says to Ferry.

“Hey, I didn’t want her to get stuck with me if she didn’t have to,” Ferry says while everyone jeers at him.

Connor leans against the wall and tries not to seem out of place. He always feels young in this kind of conversation—two decades younger than Ferry, a kid crashing the grownup table. He won’t even have a mark for almost six years.

He looks around for younger reinforcements, but Hallsy and Ebs are whispering to each other on a couch, and Yak is nowhere to be seen. He does catch sight of Nuge in the hallway, talking to a girl Connor’s never seen before, their heads about as close together as Hallsy’s and Ebs’.

“Hey,” Connor says to Yak, who’s just appeared with a cocktail in each hand. “Who’s Ryan talking to? Is that someone’s wife?”

“Wife?” Yak looks. “No, is Bre. Nuge’s girlfriend.”

Connor starts to nod, and then stops. “Wait. Nuge’s girlfriend?”

“Yes, I know, all surprised that anyone can stand him,” Yak says.

“But…” Connor does the draft year math. He could have sworn… “Nuge isn’t twenty-four yet, right?”

Yak shrugs like it’s not a big thing. “Is Nuge. Does what he want.”

Connor looks back at the pair of them in the hallway. It’s one thing to mess around, but— _girlfriend._ The two of them are still talking, looking comfortable with each other, not like they’re in the first stages of a casual relationship where it’s all about impressing the other person. Looking like they’ve been going out for a while. She cups her hand around her drink, and he can see that she doesn’t have a soul mark, either.

Connor knows some people do this. He just never expected it to be anyone he knew. “How can he _do_ that to her?” he asks, but Yak has already wandered off with his drinks. He catches Ebs’ eye instead, not intentionally, but Ebs is staring at him from the couch where Hallsy is busy talking loudly to Brandon Davison. The expression on Ebs’ face—

Connor looks away. Maybe he shouldn’t be questioning a teammate’s relationship so loudly. Even if it is a dumb, risky relationship to be in. He wants to know who’s older—who’s going to leave who first—but he’s not about to ask.

He’s been trying not to drink too much this afternoon, but Ferry has really good beer, so he’s having trouble keeping his eyes open by the time dinnertime rolls around. Hallsy stumbles upon him when he’s curled up in a chair, blinking at the cushion pattern.

“Oh man, we lost the rookie,” Hallsy says. “Ebs!”

The two of them get Connor out to the car—except that Connor can walk just fine on his own, thank you very much; he’s just a little bit sleepy—and the movement of the car just about knocks him out. He drags himself to his room and collapses on his bed as soon as they’re back.

When he wakes up a few hours later, he feels at least fifty percent more human. He’s also starving. He heads to the kitchen and pauses when he hears voices.

“Don’t be such a baby. I told you already, he wasn’t talking about us,” Hallsy’s saying.

“That’s exactly what he was talking about. Don’t be an idiot,” Ebs says. He sounds kind of heated. “Do you really think—”

Connor accidentally kicks the door frame on his way into the room. Ebs stops talking, and they both look up at him.

“Hey.” Hallsy gives him a smile. It takes a second, but Ebs smiles too, even if his is a little forced.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Connor says. “I just—is that sushi?”

“Oh yeah, dude, help yourself.” Hallsy gestures at the table, which is covered with way more boxes of sushi than any three people could ever eat, even if they are hockey players. Hallsy did the ordering, then. “And don’t worry about it. Just some losers hating on the team, you know.”

“Yeah.” Connor expected that, when he found out he was coming to Edmonton. “We’re gonna change their minds,” he says, way more confidently than he feels, and Hallsy’s smile goes wider.

The sushi’s pretty good, too.

***

Of course, the winning doesn’t keep up once the season starts. And it shouldn’t matter that Connor doesn’t get a goal in his first game, but did Jack Eichel have to get such a good one?

He tries not to complain about it when Dylan calls him on Skype the next day. Connor’s asking about the Otters roster, catching up on how all the guys are doing, when Dylan interrupts him.

“Dude, you don’t care about Coney’s Algebra grades,” he says. “What the fuck was it like playing in an actual NHL game?”

“Oh,” Connor says. “It was…cool, I guess.”

“Cool? That’s all you have for me?” Dylan says. “Come on, I’m trying to live vicariously here.”

Connor laughs awkwardly. He kind of wishes they weren’t doing this while Dylan can see his face. “I don’t want to like, I don’t know. Rub it in.”

Dylan looks at him silently for a moment, and Connor thinks he’s really fucked it up now. “I didn’t mean—” he says hurriedly.

“Look,” Dylan says. “I’m not about to break. When you don’t talk about stuff, though, it kind of seems like…you feel bad for me? Or something? And that’s—”

“No. I don’t,” Connor says, maybe a little too strongly, but it’s the truth. “I mean, you’re going to be here. Next year. Or whenever they get their acts together. I don’t need to feel bad for you.”

“Then stop being a pussy and tell me about your first game,” Dylan says, and Connor laughs. “Or whatever. I want to know about your life, you know? Don’t make me find out from the press.”

Connor groans. “Please say you’re not reading my press.”

“But, McJesus,” Dylan says, grinning. “How am I supposed to keep up with your revelations?”

Connor gives him the finger. He seems to need to do that a lot.

***

It’s nice to have someone to complain to, now that he and Dylan are talking about stuff more. Connor can talk to Hallsy and Ebs and everyone else on the team, but he still doesn’t know them, really. And he doesn’t think they’d put up with him whining about going two games without scoring a goal.

He’s trying not to complain about anything at all around the team, actually. He’s here to add, not subtract, so he does his best to be positive about everyone’s game and to go out as much as possible, even though he’s still tired from playing so much and can’t drink in bars.

He thinks about trying to pick up. He hasn’t done much of anything with anyone in a while—he was so focused on training this summer, and before that he spent most of his time with the other Otters. Most of the girls in the bars they go to are too old for him, but there are some college students around who would probably be okay. If it weren’t so horribly awkward.

“We should find you a girl,” Hallsy says when they’re out celebrating their first win, against the Blues. Connor can’t stop himself from making a face.

“Come on, it’ll be fun. Hallsy’s good at this,” Ebs says. They’re both kind of tipsy already, sloshing their beers when they go to drink them.

“I have super picking-up powers,” Hallsy says.

“How come you never leave with anyone, then?” Connor asks, and Hallsy just beams at him.

“What do you like?” he asks. “Brunettes? Redheads?”

Connor shrugs uncomfortably, aware that he’s giving in. “Why is it always about hair color? I’m not making out with her hair.”

Both of them crack up, like he’s just said the funniest thing ever. “You,” Ebs says, finger poking into Connor’s chest, “are priceless.”

“We have to let someone else get in on this,” Hallsy says, and then he’s dragging Connor over to the bar, towards a girl with a blond ponytail and big eyes who looks tentatively happy to see them.

Maybe Hallsy does have super picking-up powers, because she actually seems interested in talking to Connor, and that usually doesn’t happen. Well, not that he usually tries. But still. She’s leaning towards him and blinking a lot and parting her lips and all sorts of stuff that’s supposed to mean a girl’s interested.

They talk, and…it’s okay. She doesn’t follow hockey but seems happy to hear about it. It’s just that Connor doesn’t know her, and it always feels like so much work to talk to people he doesn’t know. He’s getting better at it with his teammates—he knows them some by now, and you don’t have to talk a lot when you’re on the ice—but he’d rather talk to someone he knows for real. Someone where he doesn’t have to think about it.

The girl goes to the bathroom, and Connor texts Dylan. _Should I take this girl home?_

_I don’t know, is she hot?_ is what he gets back.

She kind of is. Connor doesn’t know how much he cares, though. _I guess?_ he sends.

_Then go for it, dude! Get some!_ Dylan texts.

Connor turns off his phone screen and stirs his straw through the ice in his coke. He wonders if Dylan is picking up girls in Erie. He probably is—neither of them really did last year, but this year Dylan doesn’t have school to worry about. He doesn’t really want to ask, though.

The girl comes back from the bathroom, all smiles, ponytail swinging behind her as she walks. Connor makes himself smile back.

“So, this has been fun,” he says. “Maybe I’ll see you here again sometime?”

Her face falls a little. “Sure,” she says. “Can I get your number?”

Connor blinks at her. Does she want to—what does she think this is? “We’re not…” he says, and his eyes flick down to her blank wrist.

She smirks. “Doesn’t mean we can’t still have fun.”

“Oh. Um, sure,” he says, and he lets her program her number into his phone and text herself from it.

“Attaboy!” Hallsy says when he comes back from the bar. “Got her digits?”

Ebs lifts his head from where he’s slumped against Hallsy’s shoulder. “He was supposed to sleep with her.”

“All in due time,” Hallsy says, and Connor gives him a halfhearted grin.

***

Connor doesn’t text the girl. She doesn’t text him, either, and he feels weirdly like he dodged a bullet.

Well, it only makes sense to be relieved. Anything more than a hookup would definitely be bad news. Whatever mistake Ryan’s making with Bre, Connor’s not about to do the same thing. Besides, he needs all his energy for the games they’re still not winning.

He gets his first goal in their third game. They lose, to Dallas, but Connor got his goal, and a tiny piece of the tension in his chest melts away. He has to work not to seem too happy when he talks to the press afterward.

“Do you think this marks a turnaround for the Oilers?” some reporter asks.

_Well, we didn’t win,_ Connor wants to say (who asks a dumb question like that, anyway?). “We’ve got a strong team here,” he says instead. “I’m feeling good about our chances.”

The problem is, one goal isn’t going to be enough. He’s supposed to be transformational here. He can sense everyone’s relief in the texts he has when he gets back to the locker room—everyone he knows, basically, sending him congratulations—and it should probably make him feel better, but he mostly just feels antsy to do it again. One goal isn’t going to get him very far.

***

Connor keeps thinking he knows all the ways in which Hallsy and Ebs are weird, but they keep surprising him.

“Dude, they are so bizarre,” Connor says to Dylan over Skype when they’ve just gotten back from playing the Flames and the Canucks on the road. “Ebs just came out of the laundry room holding a Slinky.”

Dylan laughs. “Maybe Hall forgot to take it out of his pants pocket.”

“No one keeps a Slinky in their pocket,” Connor says, though he has the uncomfortable feeling that might not be true.

“Did he seem mad?” Dylan asks.

“No, he was grinning,” Connor says. “And then he just disappeared into Hallsy’s room and shut the door.”

Dylan hmms. “I’ll get the detective squad right on it.”

“No, but it’s weird, right?” Connor says. “And last night I think they had a one-sided staring contest.”

“That isn’t even a thing,” Dylan says.

“Hallsy stared at the side of Ebs’ head for, like, half an hour, and Ebs didn’t look at him, and then when he finally did they both burst out laughing.”

Dylan scrunches his nose up. “Yeah, okay. That’s pretty weird.”

“It’s like they’re a different species,” Connor says. “A really confusing one.”

“Do you have scurvy yet?” Dylan asks.

Connor doesn’t. But only because he’s taken over cooking. He doesn’t have a great repertoire, but at least most of what he makes isn’t orange and out of a box.

“Holy fuck, how did you learn to do this?” Ebs says one day when he walks in to find Connor cooking chicken breasts.

“Um, life?” Connor says. It wasn’t that hard. He just put some chicken breasts in the oven.

“Wait, is it chicken-colored inside?” Hallsy comes in and perches with his arms on Ebs’ shoulders to see around him. “When I tried this it was not chicken-colored.”

Connor cuts into one. It is chicken-colored. “Ooh,” they both say.

Connor wonders if he can get them to dress up like the aliens from _Toy Story_ for Halloween.

***

As November gets closer, the reporters start asking Hallsy more questions about his picture. Some players refuse to talk about theirs—Connor doesn’t think Ebs has ever worn anything less than a long-sleeved shirt when talking to reporters, and Purce throws an arm over Connor’s shoulders one drunken (for Purce) night and warns him of the evils of letting fangirls see his mark.

“Two words, man,” he says. “Tat. Toos.”

“There’s no way that’s ever happened,” Connor says. But he remembers the look in the eyes of some of the fans outside stadiums, guys and girls alike, and he thinks that maybe when his mark comes in he’ll try not to let anyone photograph it.

Hallsy’s probably going to put his on Instagram.

“Yeah, my parents had a tiger for theirs,” he says to a group of reporters who are hanging on his every word, as if this has anything to do with hockey. “My mom loved hers when it came in, this big tiger head, and my dad said it just made him feel stupid, going around with a tiger’s ass on his wrist.”

The reporters laugh. “What do you think yours will be?” one of them asks.

“I don’t know, I’m just excited to see those lines come in, you know?” Hallsy says. “Like, that’s the one thing you can have confidence in: that the picture on your wrist will be the right one.”

The one thing you can have confidence in. Connor used to think about it like that when he was a little kid, his picture match out there waiting for him, neither of them knowing who the other was. It used to make it easier to fall asleep when he was stressed out about school or hockey. Now it’s not enough to counteract the feeling that the team isn’t where they should be.

It’s just—sure, it’s only his first month. And maybe he can’t expect to be able to singlehandedly change the team when Hallsy couldn’t, and Nuge couldn’t, and Nail couldn’t. But he should be _better_ than this.

“Hey,” Ebs says to him in the locker room after they drop a game to Minnesota. It’s their third loss in a row. “You’re playing well out there.”

“Not well enough,” Connor says shortly. He’s tired of everyone trying to bullshit him about this.

“Um, I can’t lie to you, remember? Authority.” Ebs taps the A on his chest.

Connor rolls his eyes. It’s hard to take an A seriously when two of the people who wear them showed up at your door the previous night, freaking out because they did an experiment to see how much toilet paper they could put in the toilet at once and it seriously backfired.

“It’s just, I’ve seen Hallsy do this,” Ebs says in a quieter voice. “Thinking that he has to fix everything because they picked him first. But he’s not the only guy on the team, you know?”

Connor shrugs uncomfortably. He knows that. But he also knows that one guy can make a difference, and he hasn’t been making enough of one. “He never says anything like that.”

“Yeah, he doesn’t like people to see.” Ebs cuts his eyes across the locker room to where Hallsy’s chatting with a reporter. There’s sort of a weird look on his face—Ebs’—and it makes Connor wonder, all of a sudden, what conversations they’ve had about it. What kind of things the two of them talk about when it’s just them.

It doesn’t matter, though. Maybe no one player can fix the team, but together they should be able to do better than this. “I just need to try harder,” Connor says.

He does try harder. He tries as hard as he possibly can. They win the next one, and then they drop the one after that, and Connor wants to bite through his mouthguard in frustration at their inability to pick up momentum. He keeps getting assists but not goals, not enough goals, not enough to be what they need him to be.

And then they’re playing Philadelphia, and he goes into the boards, and he feels something crack.

***

The first twenty-four hours are a haze of pain meds. When Connor’s finally lucid enough to remember anything, he’s lying on the couch in their apartment, and Hallsy and Ebs are hovering over him looking worried.

“So we did this thing this summer where we took all the labels off our soup cans,” Ebs says.

“There were reasons,” Hallsy says.

“Anyway, we think this is chicken noodle.” Ebs holds out a bowl of soup.

Connor blinks up at them. There’s a dull pain in his shoulder, the kind that’s held at bay with pain meds but is still lurking, almost out of sight. The whole rest of his body feels floaty and sick.

“Um,” he says. “I don’t think I can hold that.”

“Ohhh,” Hallsy says, and Ebs kicks him.

“Dammit, Hallsy, I told you we should have bought straws.”

“I’m just…gonna sleep, okay?” Connor says, and the two of them back out of the room with the soup.

When he wakes up again, there’s a mug of soup with a curly straw in it on the end table. He lifts a hand for it, and then winces, because wow, his shoulder hurts way more than it did.

Collarbone. He remembers them saying that, in the aftermath of the accident. There was something else they said, something that made him feel sicker than the pain. Something about…

Two months.

Connor closes his eyes. Just one tiny stretch of bone, and two months. That’s a third of the season. Almost thirty games.

There are pain meds on the end table next to the soup. Connor’s not sure when he last took one, but it must have been a while, if the pain in his collarbone is anything to go by. He swallows another one and goes back to sleep.

***

When he wakes up again, it’s to Hallsy holding a phone to his face. “She wants to talk to you real bad,” he says.

Connor’s having trouble getting his eyes to focus. He takes the phone with his good hand. “Hello?”

“I’m at the airport,” his mom’s voice says. “Do you want anything from the store?”

Connor’s head is packed with the cotton stuff at the top of pill bottles. “Mom?” he says.

“When I spoke to those two roommates of yours last night, they said they had everything you’d need,” she says, “but honestly, I’m not sure those boys are all there.”

Connor’s still trying to figure out what’s going on. “You talked to Hallsy and Ebs?”

“They were very concerned about you.” There are some outdoor sounds in the background. “I’m getting into a cab now, so if you want anything, let me know in the next twenty minutes.”

“You’re…wait, you’re at the airport, here?”

“Of course,” she says. “I told you I was coming, remember?”

He doesn’t, but there’s a lot about the past twenty-four hours he doesn’t remember clearly. And maybe he should feel like he should do this on his own, but he really, really doesn’t want to. “You’re the best,” he says weakly.

***

When she shows up, she takes one look at Connor on the couch and hustles him into his bedroom. “I don’t know what those two were thinking,” she murmurs, tucking him in.

“I’m okay,” he says, or at least he thinks he does—the pain meds are still messing with his brain a little.

“I’m going to take an inventory of the kitchen,” she says. “You want anything, you ring this.”

It’s the bell she used to put at their bedsides when they were sick as kids. “Mom,” he says. “I don’t need—”

“In case you don’t feel like texting.” Her lips smooth over his forehead. It shouldn’t do anything to make him feel better, but somehow it does.

When he wakes up a few hours later, it’s to a thump on his door, like someone fell against it. He opens his eyes and groans. Apparently the thing where he thought he was lucid before was a lie, because now his chest feels like it’s on fire and the floaty cushion of painkillers is gone. There’s another thump on the door, and then it opens, Ebs’ head poking in.

“Sorry about that,” he says. “Hallsy didn’t want me to come in, but your mom went to the store, and this guy on the phone keeps saying he wants to talk to you.”

Connor holds out his hand in confusion. It’s Ebs’ phone this time, not his own, and there shouldn’t be anyone calling for him on it. “Hello?” he says.

“What the fuck, Connor, you answer your texts when you go down on the ice like that.” It’s Dylan’s voice, and he sounds anxious in a way he almost never gets.

“Sorry,” Connor says. “Sorry, I—there were a lot of pain meds.”

“Christ. Are you okay?”

Connor squeezes his eyes shut. “Two months.”

“Shit.” They’re silent for a minute. Neither one of them has to say what that means for Connor’s rookie year. For the Oilers’ chances.

Then: “Sorry I freaked out,” Dylan says. “It was just kind of scary.”

“Did you see it?” Connor asks. “When I went down?”

“Yeah,” Dylan says. “They kept showing it from different angles.”

“Was it—could I—”

He can’t ask the thing he wants to ask, wouldn’t even have thought to say it out loud if the pain weren’t getting in the way of his filter, but Dylan answers anyway. “You couldn’t have done anything different. Don’t do that to yourself.”

Connor will, and they both know it. “I wish you were here,” he whispers. It’s the kind of thing he doesn’t usually let himself say, but he’s willing to blame it on the pain right now.

“Me, too,” Dylan says, and Connor wonders if he’s remembering last year: the hours they spent together on Connor’s bed, Connor’s ankle propped up on pillows and Dylan doing homework or messing on his phone. The times when the painkillers weren’t enough and Dylan would spend hours telling him bad joke after bad joke, until Connor was laughing at the awfulness and shouting at Dylan to stop, have mercy, but Dylan kept going. _A horse walks into a bar—_

“You’ll be okay,” Dylan says.

“I know,” Connor lies.

***

His mom can only stay for two days. They’re a good two days, if only because of the way she makes Hallsy and Ebs slink around with their tails between their legs, holding various cleaning products. Connor spends a lot of time snickering into his comforter. He tries to sleep on the couch, but his mom doesn’t let him, so Hallsy gives her his room, saying he can crash with Ebs for a couple of nights.

It’s bad timing, really—the team is leaving for a road trip the same day his mom has to go home. “I’m sorry I can stay longer,” she says as she goes around tidying his room on the last morning. “If the ad weren’t launching this week—I hate to leave you alone here.”

“It’s okay,” Connor says. “Ferry is sending Krista over later with some food.”

“Hm.” Connor can practically see her picturing his grisly death from, he doesn’t know, not having anyone to clean the bathroom or something. “Is there anybody nearby who can stay with you? For the night, I mean?”

Connor adjusts his shoulder on the pillow. “Pretty much everyone I know is on the team.”

“No one…special?” she asks, and it takes Connor a moment, but then he can feel his cheeks getting red.

“Mom! I’m not—you think I would date?”

“I’m not saying it would be a good idea,” she says. “But I know what you kids get up to.”

This isn’t the kind of thing he ever expected to hear from his mom. Not from the woman who lectured him for half an hour about how it was better that he go to junior prom in a group. He would definitely be finding an excuse to slink out of the room if he were better at moving right now. “Um. No. I don’t do that kind of thing.”

“Fine, fine.” She fishes out some dirty clothing that may have been under his bed for the last two months. “You know, Taylor’s room is really very tidy. Hardly even seems lived in.”

“I’m sure he’s just terrified of you,” Connor says. “Also, he doesn’t have mobility issues at the moment.”

She gives him a look.

“What?” he asks. “Do you really want me digging around under my bed right now?”

“Never mind,” she says. “I’m just glad you boys are all getting along.”

***

It’s weird, being alone again after having had his mom around. Connor hadn’t realized it before, but he’s never been alone in the house here—he and Hallsy and Ebs have always left together, when they’ve left. Combined with the collarbone situation, it might be making him a little stir-crazy.

“Okay,” Dylan says the fifth time Connor Skypes him the day after the team leaves for California. “You realize I have a job, right?”

“Sorry,” Connor says. He can feel his cheeks start to burn. “I didn’t mean—I can hang up—”

“No, no, I’m just saying, this calls for desperate measures.” Dylan’s shaking his head in mock grief. “I’m going to have to go out there.”

Clearly he’s joking, but— “Really?”

“Hey, you offered,” Dylan says. He’s grinning a bit. “Remember?”

He does remember. He remembers pressing his hand against Dylan’s and telling him anytime, anyplace, Connor would buy the ticket, he just had to name the date. He just thought it was one of those things they weren’t talking about. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, of course. This weekend?”

“Game,” Dylan says, and yeah, of course he has a game—Dylan isn’t sitting around going crazy with boredom like Connor is. “The weekend after, though? We have a couple of days off, and I could probably miss a practice, if I told them it was for you.”

Connor swallows against the light and fluttery feeling in his gut. “Wow, way to throw my name around.”

“Gotta be some perks to putting up with you,” Dylan says, smirking.

Connor’s grinning. He should really stop that. “Oh hey, you’ll be here for Hallsy’s twenty-fourth.”

“Oh God.” Dylan groans. “Is it going to be a shitshow? It is, isn’t it?”

“Well, it’s Hallsy,” Connor says. “So we have to assume.”

***

It does seem like it’s going to be a shitshow. When they get back from California, it’s less than a week until the big day, and it’s all Hallsy seems to talk about.

Maybe it’s a good thing he’s talking a lot, because Ebs is being really quiet. He’s always a little quieter than Hallsy, but these days he’s going around with his mouth pressed in a thin line. Connor hasn’t seen him like this since the day he moved in.

“What’s going on with him?” Connor asks Hallsy the day after they get back, when Ebs has just left the room without saying anything. He’s been playing pretty well, so it can’t be that.

“He’s just being lame,” Hallsy says. “Don’t worry about it.”

It’s not much of an answer, but Connor has long since learned that there are some things Hallsy and Ebs will only ever understand about each other. “Oh, um,” he says, “by the way, how would you feel about my friend Dylan coming to your thing?”

“Sure, yeah, bring whoever you want,” Hallsy says. “Strome?”

“Yeah, we played together last year,” Connor says.

“I know,” Hallsy says, and Connor should be used to people knowing things about his life by now, but it feels weird to hear it about Dylan. Like Hallsy’s been poking into something private of his.

_Ur officially invited to hallsyfest,_ he texts Dylan.

_Thank god I won’t be crashing the kegger,_ Dylan replies. _How people would talk._

***

Connor’s glad he has Dylan’s visit and Hallsy’s party and its attendant ridiculousness to distract him, because it turns out that a broken collarbone hurts like a bitch. They can’t put a cast on it, just a brace, and every time he moves it hurts. Even if it’s just walking across a room. He can’t even play video games, which means he has to, like, read things, or he’ll die of boredom.

“Oh my God, you’re, like, a secret intellectual,” Hallsy says when Connor’s reading in the armchair in the living room.

“Um, it’s Harry Potter,” Connor says.

“So?” Hallsy asks, and Ebs snorts and shoves him across the couch with his foot. The two of them start one of their weird wrestling matches, and Connor ignores them. Harry’s about to go into the Chamber of Secrets; he loves this part.

***

Dylan arrives about four hours after Connor finishes the fourth Harry Potter book and starts considering death via boredom. Dylan told Connor he’d get a cab, but by this point Connor has legitimately not left the house in a week, so he badgers Hallsy until he gives him a ride to the airport.

Somehow this results in both Hallsy and Ebs giving him a ride. Connor’s learned not to question these things.

He’s seen Dylan’s face so much lately on Skype. It’s not like it’s unfamiliar. So there’s really no good reason for the way his own face stretches into a smile as soon as he sees him. It’s just different, seeing him in person, and only the knowledge that it would kill his collarbone keeps him from giving him a welcome hug.

“Hey.” Dylan’s smiling, too. He has such a funny face. It’s dumb, really. “Help a guy out? Carry my bags?”

Connor puts out his hand for them, winces at the twinge in his collarbone, opens his mouth to explain. But Dylan cracks up before he can.

“I’m just kidding, God. Good to see you.” He touches his hand to Connor’s sleeve, just above his wrist. Connor curls his hand up.

“You too.” The way he’s smiling must look really lame. “Come on, my roommates gave me a ride.”

Hallsy and Ebs are friendly to Dylan, in the casual way Connor’s noticed NHL guys tend to be with other players off the ice. Sort of a “you’re in the club, too” kind of recognition. Connor’s glad; he was a little worried they’d be weird about Dylan since he’s not officially playing in the NHL yet, but they’re chill about it, ask about the Otters’ season.

“Are you okay, being in a car?” Dylan asks Connor in a low voice once they’re driving. “It doesn’t hurt too much?”

“It’s fine,” Connor says. It does hurt, a little, with each bump in the road, but it’s nothing he can’t handle.

Dylan gets the grand tour of the place once they get back, all half-dozen rooms of it. “Sorry, I’m going to be really boring,” Connor says when they’re done. He didn’t really think this through; just thought _Dylan’s coming_ and said yes. “I can’t even play video games.”

“Damn it, and you _know_ I came here for the games,” Dylan says. They’re stretched out across Connor’s bed, Connor enjoying the feeling of having both his shoulders motionless on a soft surface. “It’s okay, you can make it up to me with gossip.”

“About what?” Connor asks. Dylan’s up on his elbows next to him, and it’s making Connor kind of stomach-jumpy, how much this feels like any normal evening last year. He feels like they should be talking about Otters strategy.

“Your roommates, for one,” Dylan says. “What’s the deal there?”

“Oh, sorry if Ebs was cranky,” Connor says. “He’s been weird lately. I promise it’s not you.”

“No, I mean…you know.” Dylan waggles his eyebrows at him.

“What?”

“I mean,” Dylan waves his hand, “you _know._ ”

Connor frowns at him. “I really don’t.”

“Okay, fine, if that’s the way you want to play it.”

Connor kind of wants to know now, but he doesn’t like feeling stupid. “So, how are the new D pairings going?” he asks, and he can tell from Dylan’s smirk that he noticed the super-obvious subject change, but he goes with it anyway.

***

Connor insists on their going sightseeing the next day, even though Dylan protests.

“Dude, I really didn’t come here to see the city,” Dylan says. “If you want to lie around all day, that’s totally fine with me.”

“I have done literally nothing else for the last week,” Connor says, so they go to the Muttart Conservatory and Fort Edmonton Park and have lunch at the West Edmonton Mall.

“I can’t believe you haven’t been to any of these places yet,” Dylan says as they sit inside at the food court. Dylan’s eating ice cream, because he can go work out later, and Connor can’t.

Connor doesn’t say the truth, which is that it hadn’t occurred to him until now to do any of these things—hadn’t occurred to him that there might be anything the city could offer him beyond hockey. He still doesn’t really think there is, even though the parks were cool or whatever: he’s here for the hockey, and every day he doesn’t play feels like a waste.

He doesn’t think he’ll ever stop feeling like that, but the feeling is a little less pressing today. Like he’s in a bubble where he’s allowed to be something else for a day or two. “I haven’t really had time,” he says instead.

Dylan grins. “You mean you haven’t done anything besides hockey.”

“Why would I want to do anything besides hockey?” Connor asks, and Dylan laughs, because Connor’s sort of joking, but it’s also the real answer, the one they both knew he would give.

“You’ve got to wonder what other people do with their lives,” Dylan says. “Like, how do they fill their days?”

“I guess they have jobs and stuff,” Connor says.

“Sounds awful,” Dylan says. “How do they make friends? What do they even talk about?”

“Boring stuff,” Connor says. “Taxes. TV. I don’t know, sports?”

“You,” Dylan says. Connor sticks his tongue out at him, and Dylan licks his ice cream cone and laughs. “You are fodder for the masses.”

“You are, too,” Connor says. “There are probably people taking pictures of us right now.”

“In that case, you should definitely stop sticking your tongue out at me.”

Connor does it again, just to be contrary.

It feels easy when it’s just the two of them in the apartment, later that afternoon when Hallsy and Ebs aren’t back yet. Connor’s usually bad at having guests—feels awkward about entertaining them—but Dylan just takes his gym pass and goes to work out, and when he comes back he flops on the couch next to Connor like he’s done it a million times.

It’s what it would be like if they lived together, Connor thinks. If they’d both played for the Otters for another year and had gotten an apartment together. He shuts down that line of thinking fast.

The peaceful feeling shifts as soon as Hallsy and Ebs get home later that evening. They say hi when they come through, but neither of them is smiling, and Connor can feel the tension in the air. He exchanges a glance with Dylan once they’ve passed. “Hang out in your room?” Dylan suggests in a low voice, and they relocate.

“What’s going on there?” Dylan asks once the door is shut behind them.

Connor does the aborted shrug that’s all he can do with the brace on. “No idea. Maybe they got bag skated today.”

“Doesn’t seem like that would be enough to get Hallsy down, at least,” Dylan says.

Connor does a controlled flop facedown on his bed. “Or maybe they’re mad at me,” he says once his face is buried in a pillow.

There’s silence as Dylan climbs onto the bed next to him. “Why the hell would they be mad at you?”

Connor turns his head to look at him across the pillows. They both know why the team would be mad at him.

Dylan rolls his eyes and flops down onto his stomach. “You have to stop doing this to yourself.”

Does he? It feels to Connor like this is what he’s supposed to be doing.

Dylan kicks his foot. “Seriously. You’re going to become an egomaniac, and then no one will want to hang out with you anymore.”

Connor kicks his foot back. “It’s just…I hate this feeling,” he mumbles into the pillow. “Like I’m wasting a year.”

“Not like you had a choice about it,” Dylan says.

“Doesn’t matter if I had a choice,” Connor says. “Year’s still wasted.”

Dylan squints at him. His face is pressed into the pillow so that only one of his eyes can actually look at Connor. “What about me?” he asks. “I’m not playing for the Coyotes this year. Am I wasting it?”

“What the fuck, no,” Connor says, startling enough that he jerks his shoulder. “They’re the ones not using you, it’s not your f—oh, fuck you,” he says when Dylan starts to grin.

“You would be pretty mad at me if I went around moaning about the chances I don’t have,” Dylan says.

“No, I wouldn’t,” Connor says, but he knows he’s lying. “Besides, you’re still playing hockey.”

“So will you, soon enough,” Dylan says. “So shut up and stop making me reassure you. It’s annoying.”

“Whatever,” Connor says, and flexes his leg like he’s going to push Dylan off the bed, but he doesn’t.

***

Connor doesn’t mean for them to fall asleep on the bed together. But they must, because when he wakes up, the bedside lamp is still on, and Dylan’s asleep on his shoulder.

It’s his good shoulder, so that’s all right. But Dylan’s arm is across his stomach and his breath is fanning across Connor’s neck and it’s making his skin do funny things. Things he tries to keep it from doing these days.

Dylan’s snuffling slightly against his shoulder. Connor slips out from under his arm as gently as he can and goes to the door. He goes to the bathroom down the hall, pees, and is heading back when he hears voices.

“But what if it doesn’t,” someone says—Ebs, he thinks, from behind his closed door.

“It will,” Hallsy answers. From Ebs’ room, even though—yes, when Connor turns to look, Hallsy’s bedroom door is shut, too.

“Stop being so—there are like seven billion people in the world,” Ebs says. “You can’t just know that it’s going to happen.”

“I do, though,” Hallsy says, and Ebs says something Connor can’t quite make out. “Because I just do,” Hallsy says, and then, “Ebby,” in a different voice, a softer voice, and then there are some sounds—

Connor’s not sure what he’s hearing at first. Then his stomach electrifies, and his feet start moving before he can even think about it. Away from the bedroom, down the hallway, into the living room, where he stops, because there’s nowhere else to go, really.

He doesn’t want to think about it. Doesn’t want to hear it. He should just turn around and go back to his bedroom, but Dylan’s in there. Connor thinks about going back and crawling into bed next to him, and he clenches his hands into fists and screws his face up and wills the heat in his cheeks to go back down.

No. He can’t go back into his room tonight.

There’s a blanket on the back of the couch. Connor lies down and pulls it over himself. He does the exercises he does before a game, trying to slow his breathing and get himself calm. As his brain starts to fuzz out, though, it gets harder not to think about things—the things that sometimes trickle into his mind late at night when he’s too weak to stop them. Soft hair under his fingers. Hot breath with the bite of alcohol on it. The echo of words: _I wanna try something. Stop me if…_

He focuses on the hum of the fridge and finally, finally falls asleep.

***

He wakes up the next morning with Hallsy and Ebs both leaning over him. “I think it’s awake,” Ebs says.

“Can we keep it?” Hallsy asks.

“Only if you take it for walks,” Ebs says.

Connor can feel himself start to flush. “Um. What are you guys doing?”

“Oh my god, it talks. Send it back.” Hallsy leaps away, grabbing Ebs’ arm, and both of them start giggling.

“We just wanted to let you know we left you a present,” Ebs says. He looks much less grim than he has the past few days. “It’s in the kitchen. For the game tonight.”

“Right,” Connor says, and he pulls the blanket over his face and ignores them until he falls back to sleep.

***

When he wakes up again, Dylan’s standing a few feet away, and he looks awful.

He’s trying not to. Connor can tell, as soon as his eyes blink open, that Dylan’s making an effort to look normal. But he’s not doing a very good job of it, and Connor can tell that he doesn’t mean it.

Connor scrambles to sit up. “Um. Sorry. I just thought it would be—more comfortable, out here. Instead of both of us trying to fit, you know.”

It’s a blatant lie. In no universe is the couch more comfortable than his bed. But Dylan nods and says, “Yeah. Sure.”

“Do you want to go out for breakfast?” Connor asks desperately.

“Okay,” Dylan says.

They’re quiet in the car. Connor’s still half asleep, and he keeps trying to think of things to say and finding nothing. There are a million topics in the world. How can he not be able to think of any?

Hockey. Hockey’s always good. “We’re going to the game tonight, right?” he says.

“Yup,” Dylan says.

“Good.” Connor gropes for something else to say about it. “I know you’ve been wanting to tell me how much our defense sucks.”

“Yeah.” Just that, when Dylan’s had ten different criticisms of the Oilers’ D every time they’ve talked about it in the last few weeks.

They’re silent for a minute. Connor watches the buildings go by, the blur of the sidewalk.

“I wasn’t trying to do anything,” Dylan says.

Connor’s stomach tightens into a little ball.

“Really.” Dylan’s face could be doing anything, anything at all, because Connor can’t look at it. “I remember what you said. I wouldn’t—”

“I know,” Connor says. He swallows against the memory of cheap vodka, sharp on his tongue. “I know.”

“Okay.” There’s a short pause. “Good.”

Connor stares out the window and wonders why he never realized the drive to the IHOP was so long.

***

Things are a little better at breakfast. Dylan orders the breakfast that comes with the pancakes shaped like Mickey Mouse, and Connor says, “You are _twelve_ years _old,_ ” and Dylan grins, actually grins, and it’s sort of okay. Connor thinks at one point about telling him what he overheard last night, but the thought makes him go hot and then cold all over, and he shovels in a bite of eggs to cover for it.

“So this thing tomorrow,” Dylan says. “What should I be expecting?”

Connor had almost forgotten about the thing tomorrow. “Uh, lots of Hallsy’s high school buddies, apparently. But you’ll probably meet them all tonight.” That’s the part he really should have been thinking about, because that’s when people coming over to their place. “I guess I should…clean? Or something?” He shifts his shoulder a little, testing the level of pain.

Dylan gives him a long-suffering look. “You’re going to make me clean, aren’t you?” he says, and Connor grins.

***

They don’t clean. They make the unilateral decision that if Hallsy wants the place clean for his wrist wrapping, he can do it his damn self. Marathoning _The Walking Dead_ for eight hours is much more important, anyway.

By the time they get up to go to the game, Connor’s bleary-eyed and a little afraid to walk around corners. “Why do I feel like we should be better armed for this game?” Dylan asks as Connor goes into the kitchen to scavenge for dinner, and Connor says, “Oh, shit.”

“What? Is it the walkers?”

“I forgot about Hallsy and Ebs’ present for us.” It’s on the kitchen island, and it’s a pair of Oilers jerseys. _So that u represent the right people tonight!_ Ebs has scrawled on a note on the back of a utility bill. Then, in Hallsy’s handwriting: _I wanted them both to be mine but Ebs said that wasn’t fair,_

“I feel like I’m going to get disowned as a Coyote prospect for this,” Dylan says.

“Nah, I’m pretty sure you’re the only Coyote who watches Oilers games,” Connor says.

They do get some laughs when they enter the press box. But the Oilers actually beat the Flames—Connor’s annoyed with himself for adding the “actually” in his head, but that’s the way this season has been going—so there are other things to talk about than his roommates’ co-opting their backs. “Just supporting our favorite forwards out there,” he says when anyone asks.

And then it’s time to go back to their apartment, along with a dozen extra Oilers, a horde of Hallsy’s friends from high school and Juniors, and a huge bag stuffed full of ace bandages.

“They’ll never use all that,” Dylan says to Connor when the bag is upended on their coffee table.

They’re squeezed next to each other in a corner, which is the only reason Connor can hear him. Upwards of twenty-five guys crammed into a single living room make a lot of noise. “I wouldn’t underestimate them,” he says.

“Okay!” Ferry shouts, standing up on the coffee table. “Everyone pay attention.” He waves his hands until the din quiets a little. “Now, as you know, tomorrow our little Hallsy becomes a man.”

Everyone coos at him. Hallsy beams.

“As such, he must participate in the age-old ritual of not finding out his fate until the rest of us are there to enjoy it.” Ferry holds up a roll of ace bandage. “One less wrist for him!”

Everyone cheers.

Hallsy surrenders his wrist willingly, and Ferry starts wrapping the bandage around it. Davidson grabs one of the markers from the bag and starts drawing on it while Ferry wraps, squiggly designs that cross multiple layers at a time and that Hallsy would never be able to recreate if he cheated and peeked.

It’s basically a shitshow. Yak holds a bottle of vodka to Hallsy’s mouth, and Hallsy sputters a laugh but takes a gulp. Everyone is drinking a lot, even though there’s a practice tomorrow and the actual party tomorrow night, and Hallsy’s wrist is rapidly disappearing under a huge hornet’s nest of ace bandages. He’s laughing, waving his arm in the air and interrupting the people drawing.

“Okay, predictions, people!” Ferry calls out. “What’s he gonna get?”

“There aren’t a lot of hockey ones out there yet,” Davidson says. “Maybe he’ll get a puck.”

“KD,” Nuge says.

“A banana,” one of the high school friends says, and they all dissolve into laughter while Hallsy tries to spray vodka at them.

“I think he’s going to get a really fucked-up apartment,” Dylan says in an undertone to Connor, and Connor snorts.

He hasn’t had much to drink since before the collarbone thing, but he lets himself have a couple of beers. He’s not on painkillers anymore, and anyway, it makes the crowd more fun. He ends up talking to some of Hallsy’s high school friends for a while, which is good if he ever needs to blackmail Hallsy someday. Apparently there was a thing with a squid that will make Hallsy end any conversation really quickly.

He loses Dylan around the time Hallsy decides he wants to dance with the bandage on, and someone puts Top 40 on the speakers. Connor doesn’t think he’d make it for long in that crowd with his collarbone intact, so he stumbles into the kitchen. He could use a moment alone, anyway.

Except he’s not alone, as it turns out. Ebs is there, too. He’s facing away from the door when Connor walks in, his hands pressed flat on the counter and his head hanging down.

“Oh, hey,” Connor says.

Ebs whirls around. He look startled, and—his eyes are red. Connor suddenly wishes he’d stayed in the living room.

“Sorry,” Connor says. “I just, uh…”

Ebs’ sleeve is pushed up, and Connor’s eyes drop to his wrist. He’s almost never seen Ebs’ soul mark; Ebs tends to cover it even at home. It’s stark against his skin, bare tree branches and roots winding in dark lines. There’s something strangely compelling about it, about the clean break down the middle where the other half of the tree is missing.

“Did you ever look for the other half?” Connor asks before he can think better of it. “I mean, on a soulmate registry or anything?”

He’s not sure why he asks, and he wishes he hadn’t immediately. Ebs’ face does something weird. “No,” he says.

“Right,” Connor says. He remembers Ebs’ words last night: _seven billion people…_

He wishes he could think of something reassuring to say, but anything he can think of would be a lie.

“I’m just going to…” he says, and he escapes back to the party. If anyone needs the solitude of the kitchen right now, it’s Ebs.

***

Everyone’s finally gone by two a.m. Ebs has come back out by this point, and he and Hallsy are slumped together on the couch, asleep. Hallsy’s wrist is wrapped in so many bandages it looks like a hornet’s nest. Connor can just see the tail end of his own signature peeking out of the tangle.

“We could wake them up,” Dylan whispers.

They could. Or Dylan could go to bed in one of their rooms. Connor’s reasonably certain no one’s been sleeping in Hallsy’s for a while. But that seems weird. And Hallsy’s head is on Ebs’ chest, and Ebs looked so awful in the kitchen earlier, and tomorrow is Hallsy’s twenty-fourth birthday.

“No,” Connor says. “You can come sleep with me.”

The air feels delicate as they’re changing into sleep clothes. Connor doesn’t want to speak for fear of making things awkward, and they’re both silent as they climb into opposite sides of the bed.

There are maybe two feet between him and Dylan. It’s not even as close as they are when they sit on the couch together. There’s no reason for him to be so tense.

They lie in silence for a while. Connor’s facing away, so he can’t see what Dylan’s doing. But he hears Dylan’s little intake of breath, and then Dylan says, “I don’t get how you’re so good at things.”

“I’m not,” Connor says. “I mean, I’m not any better than you.”

“Not at hockey.” There’s a rustling, and Connor wonders if Dylan is turning towards him. He doesn’t turn over to check. “At…other things. At not wanting things.”

Connor spreads his fingers over the bed sheet next to him, clenches it in his grip. “I want plenty of things.”

“Not for yourself. Not if you think they aren’t things you should want.”

Dylan’s voice is a little closer now. Connor wonders if—if he’s going to move closer still, if he’s going to touch him. His skin prickles from his scalp to his toes.

“I don’t want things that aren’t going to be good for people,” he says.

Behind him, he can hear Dylan breathing almost silently. Connor’s muscles stay tense, waiting for a touch that doesn’t come, and doesn’t come, and doesn’t come.

He lies in the dark for a long time before falling asleep.

***

The next morning isn’t actually very awkward, if only because the house is a mess.

“Oh my God, did we go to bed with it looking like this last?” Dylan asks when they come out to the living room.

“Hey, it’s not your house,” Connor says. He kicks at one of the empty beer bottles that’s already spilled its dregs onto the floorboards. “You don’t have to feel guilty.”

Hallsy and Ebs aren’t on the couch anymore. It’s too early for practice, so Connor assumes they relocated to one of their rooms. He doesn’t want to know any more than that.

He and Dylan clean up the living room, Dylan doing most of it because Connor still can’t move all that well. It means Dylan spends a lot of time chirping him for being a lazy bum. Connor retaliates by ordering in breakfast for one.

(Okay, maybe he orders breakfast for two. But he doesn’t have to tell Dylan that before it arrives.)

When they’re finishing up their pancakes and hash browns and breakfast burritos, Hallsy stumbles into the kitchen, hair a mess and huge bandaged wrist waving. Ebs is right behind him.

“Aw, you guys ordered without us?” Hallsy says. “No fair.”

“Guys who clean up the living room get breakfast orders,” Connor says.

“But it’s my birthday,” Hallsy whines. “I want pancakes.”

“I’ll make you pancakes,” Ebs says.

“Awwww,” Hallsy says, and clips Ebs on the top of the head with his mass of bandages. Connor and Dylan strategically retreat.

The other two leave half an hour later to go to practice, even though Connor’s not sure how Hallsy’s supposed to practice with his wrist the size of a goalie mask. They leave the kitchen full of flour and looking actually worse than it did last night.

“Remember when I told you you should just get your own place?” Dylan asks, smirking.

“Shut up, I like them,” Connor says. He does. He kind of wishes he liked them a little less, today.

***

Connor’s not sure what to wear to a twenty-fourth birthday party. He tries on about five things and realizes he’s thinking about it like gearing up: arming himself for an ordeal. That depresses him too much, so he sticks with the first shirt he tried.

Dylan drives, because Connor still can’t handle the wheel. “So lost without me,” he jokes, and Connor busies himself with the seatbelt to avoid looking at him.

The party’s at a fancy-ish restaurant. Connor is honestly surprised; the way Hallsy’s been talking about this event, Connor sort of pictured it as something dark and beer-coated. Like a frat party would probably be, if he were ever to go to one. But this place is actually classy.

Of course, once he gets to the back room, the people aren’t. Hallsy’s high school friends are loud. They’re also all tipsy already, even though Connor and Dylan aren’t exactly late. They’re gathered round the open bar, and either they’ve been here a while, or they’ve been pre-gaming.

Hallsy’s parents, on the other side of the room, look a little lost. Connor knows how they feel.

The place fills up pretty quickly: teammates, former teammates, guys Hallsy must just know from international play. At one point Dylan clutches his arm and makes a strangled noise, and Connor looks up to see Tyler Seguin coming in.

“Dude, it’s not like you don’t hang out with professional hockey players every day,” Connor says.

“Yeah, but those ones I’m expecting,” Dylan says. “It’s not fair to blindside me like this.”

The dinner is a buffet, and there’s dancing starting way earlier than Connor would have expected. Connor’s not sure if it’s that Hallsy’s friends are all drunk that much earlier than he’d expect or if they just require lower levels of drunkenness for dancing. Maybe both.

The dancing pauses eventually for toasts—way too many of them, in Connor’s opinion, but that might also have to do with the drunkenness of the deliverers. Hallsy’s parents say some really nice things, though, and so do some of his former coaches, and fucking Tyler Seguin is surprisingly coherent, though maybe only in contrast to Hallsy’s high school friends. Someone tries to drag Ebs to the front, but he laughs and ducks his head and waves them off. Hallsy grins and slings his enormous wrist around Ebs’ neck.

After that, the music gets louder and it all kind of dissolves into chaos for a while. “When are they unwrapping that thing?” Dylan shouts to Connor over the music as Hallsy waves his wrist above his head.

“Soon, I hope,” Connor says.

“Great.” Dylan fiddles with the edge of his drink cup for a minute. “I think I’m going to get some air for a minute.”

It’s a lot lamer standing in the corner doing nothing alone, so Connor goes to hang out with some of the Oilers and ends up talking to Tyler Seguin.

“I didn’t know you and Hallsy were close,” Connor says. Shouts. Everything has to be shouted in this room right now.

“We try to keep up.” Seguin turns his wrist over, blank skin facing up, and grins. “Always gotta show up to see him go first.”

Can’t be much longer for him—draft year 2010. “Are you scared?” Connor says, then feels dumb for asking that.

Seguin blinks a little. “Nah, you just gotta take what comes, right? Trust that it’ll be the right thing.”

Right. Connor knows that. He just—

He does a couple circuits of the room to look for Dylan, but he can’t find him anywhere. He doesn’t need to—Dylan can hold his own—but Dylan’s leaving tomorrow night. Connor might not see him for months. And—and there are lots of people in the crowd that Connor knows, but no one else he wants to talk to, really. No one else he wants to stand next to in a crowded room and not need to talk to.

He’s trying to decide if he should have another drink or awkwardly go to talk Hallsy’s parents when there’s a spoon tapping on a glass in the center of the room, and the music cuts out. “Okay, everyone, it’s time!” Ferry shouts.

Fuck. Connor’s stomach really shouldn’t drop so badly at that.

A bunch of guys come forward to unwrap Hallsy’s wrist. Connor doesn’t—no way would his collarbone be okay through that. But at least half the team is up there, and a bunch of Hallsy’s other friends, all exclaiming about how their signatures are intact.

“Like I was going to peek,” Hallsy says. “What do you take me for?” He’s laughing as layer after layer comes off.

Connor catches sight of Hallsy’s parents, hands clasped together. Everyone’s craning their necks, trying to get a line of sight.

Ferry’s the one who stops them at the last layer of bandage. “And now for the true marker of our young Hallsy’s soul,” he says, and whips it off.

Connor can’t see Hallsy’s wrist from where he’s standing. But he can see his face. He sees the way it suddenly goes blank, all the laughter draining out of it. The shock, like he can’t believe what he’s seeing.

The rest of the room must see it, too, because the excited hush turns into something else, something uncertain. A couple of people start to say something, something excited, maybe, but then they fall silent, too. Everyone going still as Hallsy stares at his wrist, looking lost.

Connor cuts his eyes over to Ebs.

If he thought Hallsy looked bad, it’s nothing compared to Ebs. Ebs looks…gutted. Hollow. But not surprised. His face is tilted down, shoulders up, like he was already braced for the blow.

Connor’s seen the faces of guys who’ve just lost the Stanley Cup playoffs. He thinks…he thinks Ebs looks worse.

Hallsy’s the one who breaks the silence. “But…I thought…” he says, voice loud in the silence, and Connor cringes at the words. At the naiveté. Hallsy’s twenty-four; he shouldn’t think—he shouldn’t still believe—

“Fuck it,” Hallsy says, voice fierce. And then he pushes through the crowd until he gets to Ebs, grabs him by face, and kisses him.

Connor jerks in surprise. He’s not the only one, to judge by the gasping sounds from the crowd. Hallsy is really going for it: bending Ebs backwards a little like he’s dipping him in a dance, hand in his hair, kissing the hell out of him. Like he’s never going to stop.

The silence gives way to a wave of whispers. Then, all of a sudden, from one of Hallsy’s high school friends: “Yeah, Hallsy! Get it!” And then there’s a wave of laughter, of cheers. A couple of people go up to them and clap them on the back.

Hallsy and Ebs separate a little, and they’re flushed and smiling, bright-eyed. Ebs rests his forehead against Hallsy’s cheek, and Hallsy pulls him closer and presses a kiss to his temple.

Connor’s mouth fills with bitter sharpness.

He backs up as everyone else mills forward, all of them talking happily now. He’s a little too fast about it, ends up jarring his collarbone a couple of times, but he winces through it and gets out of the room.

He’s not sure where Dylan went. For a few minutes he can’t find him at all, and he thinks, what if he went home? What if last night was the last chance he was going to offer, and now that Connor’s said no to it—

Then he turns a corner by the bathroom, and Dylan’s standing there, leaning against the wall, head kind of down, not on his phone or anything. Just standing. “Hey,” Connor says, and Dylan snaps his head up.

He looks—he’s smiling, but it’s weak, like he’s distracted. “Oh, hey. Did they do the thing?”

“Yeah,” Connor says. And then, because there’s no point in beating around the bush: “They didn’t match.”

Dylan’s eyes flick over his face. “Him and—”

“Yeah.” Connor shifts his weight. “Hallsy, uh. He kissed him anyway.”

Dylan’s eyebrows go up.

“Everyone cheered,” Connor says, and suddenly he feels sick, stomach twisting with nerves like he didn’t have even at the draft.

“They did?” Dylan says faintly.

He can’t get his eyes off the lines of Dylan’s face, even though it feels like too much to look at. “I’m not—better,” he says, whispers, but the words feel too loud anyway. “At not wanting things. I mean, maybe that’s a thing I can do, but I’m not sure—I’m not sure it’s better.”

Dylan’s eyes are glued to his now. Cautious. Connor waits, lets the silence stretch out until he feels like it might break, and finally Dylan says, “It really sucks that we’re not playing together this year.”

“Yeah,” Connor says, fervent, too fast. “Like, I’m not complaining about being in the—whatever. But I wish we could have still done that. That we were still doing that.”

“Connor,” Dylan says, and Connor watches his mouth form the word. He takes a step closer, and he feels detached, like his head isn’t quite connected to his body.

“I just—maybe I don’t always want to be who I’m supposed to be, you know?” he says.

“You are such an idiot,” Dylan says, low, close, relieved, and then he’s kissing him, mouth hot and sweet and open, and Connor’s kissing him right back.

It goes on for a long time. Connor slides his hand into hair he tried so hard to forget about touching and angles Dylan’s head. He feels desperate, suddenly, like he can’t get close enough, even though they’re pressed together along their whole bodies and sharing the same air. “Why did we wait so long,” Connor mumbles into the kiss, and Dylan laughs and whacks him in the side and then soothes his hand along the spot. Connor shivers and kisses him again.

He feels like he’s drunk when they finally pull apart, just enough to breathe. “We should go say goodbye to Hallsy and Ebs,” Connor says.

“Why, are we going somewhere?” Dylan says with a smirk, and Connor gets too distracted by thinking of where this could be going to chirp back, too distracted by the idea of Dylan pressed up against him like this only with less clothing on, and—oh, look, there’s Dylan’s mouth again.

When they finally do make it back into the party, it’s a good fifteen minutes later. They’re not holding hands, but Connor can feel the connection between their bodies. Can feel himself being pulled by it. It makes him stand too close, press their shoulders together.

It’s not hard to spot Hallsy and Ebs on the other side of the room. They’re hanging onto each other, Ebs laughing at something Hallsy said, and Connor has legitimately never seen Ebs look like this. Carefree. None of the heaviness that he usually wears even when he and Hallsy are being silly together. So happy he’s practically glowing with it. And Hallsy is glowing right back.

“Do you think we look like that?” Dylan asks in Connor’s ear.

Connor turns to say he hopes so, but he gets distracted by Dylan’s face. Eyes bright, cheeks flushed, mouth pink, and if Connor doesn’t get to kiss him again soon he might not make it. “Fuck, let’s say goodbye and get out of here,” he says, and Dylan’s eyes go hot.

Hallsy doesn’t seem upset that they’re leaving when they go up to say goodbye. He’s too busy turning to Ebs, whispering things and giving him a dumb smile. His wrist is uncovered now, some kind of random abstract design on it, but no one’s paying attention to it.

“Yeah, see you at home, eh?” he says to Connor when Connor makes their goodbyes, and then Ebs nudges him about something and Connor can see his attention flick back, his smile going dumb again.

Connor doesn’t mind. He has Dylan pressing against his arm.

“Wonder what our wrist-unwrapping parties will be like,” Dylan says as they leave the room.

Connor looks back at the crowd, all assembled to see Hallsy’s soul mark. The one that’s supposed to determine his destiny, the person he’ll spend the rest of his life with. “Stop being dumb,” he says, and drags Dylan out to the car so they can start making up for lost time.

**Author's Note:**

> I haz a [Tumblr](http://linskywords.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
